Comment by sarcas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sarcas | Hacker News Reader

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The issue comes down to how the money is distributed and spent. The current Scottish Government has control over something on the order of 75% of the money spent in Scotland (the other 25% coming from central government in Westminister on reserved matters like defence). Conversely, as it currently stands (ignoring the new rules from 2016), the Scottish Government only has control over something like 15% of tax raising powers (again, everything else coming from Westminster).

Thus, if you were a party who wanted to promise cutting taxes to the population you could, but you'd have very little impact on the taxation's bottom line. I actually don't know what the Barnett formula says about money the Scottish government doesn't spend from Westminster (wondering if you could in theory as a party in Holyrood decide just not to spend the money you were given, as a forcing tactic).

Regardless, all parties (in both London and Edinburgh) and the Scottish population are in agreement, the situation of controlling spending but not tax raising is an unfit state for a government to be in.

[edit - make my 'all parties' comment clearer]

> Thus, if you were a party who wanted to promise cutting taxes to the population you could, but you'd have very little impact on the taxation's bottom line.

Are we talking about the UK parliament cutting taxes, or the Scottish parliament? I get the impression that the article is talking about the UK parliament: the author is trying to explain why the Conservatives have limited support in Scotland, and why they're trying to make the Scottish parliament responsible for raising their own taxes.

But if the UK parliament cuts taxes everywhere (including Scotland), and that has little effect on Scottish spending, then it seems like incentives are such that the Scottish population would most likely support that.

OTOH if it has disproportionate effect on Scottish spending, they would oppose. But if I read you correctly (do I?), you're saying that's not true; and a priori I have no particular reason to expect that the effect would be small or large relative to the cut.

I was talking about the Scottish parliament. As I read it, the article talks about both (as I read it). Feels like I'm derailing the discussion a bit but essentially:

Overall Scottish spending is not related to UK tax levels directly, but is directly related to spending in England and Wales[1]. So the argument is that there is little point in a party trying to get voted into Holyrood (the Scottish parliament) promising a smaller states and fewer taxes at the moment, because they have little proportionate control on the taxes (although again, on the spending they do in theory).

The reverse is not true for Westminister - the more they spend in England and Wales, the more is available for Scotland to spend, and vice versa.

Hope that clarifies what I was saying!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_formula

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